This year I decided that I needed to get some good shots of raft spiders, the largest spider species found in the UK. Unfortunately living in Essex there are no sites nearby, the closest good site I’m aware of being Thursley Common in Surrey, where the Bog Raft Spider Dolomedes fimbriatus can be found. A…
Here is a video from back in September of the Juvenile red backed shrike that stayed for a few days at West Canvey Marshes. This was the only day with good weather I could get over to see it, early one morning. It was sat in a bush so I put the Pentax Q on…
On Sunday I popped into RSPB Rainham Marshes in hope of finding some water voles. I had no luck but did find a couple of cooperative migrant hawker males. Sadly the light was not so cooperative m, with the sun increasingly dissappearing behind clouds, and doing so as the dragonfly hovering in front of me!…
The morning of my last post when I got the Merlin was quite an atmospheric and misty one. There was bit of a frost around as an egret was hunting along a flooded ditch. There was a nice flock of curlews too. And a rabbit just about posed on the grass.
Yesterday I popped to the KWT Oare Marshes reserve. It was pretty quiet in terms of people and birds. I did see a little egret and I got a shot of it with my K5. I had gone to try out my Pentax Q on the DA*300mm with the adapter but the sun of course…
Here are a few photos (from June last year) of a pair of nesting Avocets. Due to the risk of from egg thieves I held off from posting these and then never got round to it, so here they are:
Since I bought my Pentax WG-2 waterproof camera I’ve barely used it. As a waterproof compact, it doesn’t match a DSLR for quality, but its ability to be submerged in water does offer some different opportunities. Today I went to RSPB Rainham where the constant rain has flooded large areas, so I thought I try…
On visit to RSPB Rainham Marshes in April I saw 2 stoats, one of which was right in front of me, but I couldn’t get a clear shot of it in the reeds and grass. There was a silver lining however, as it scared one of the common lizards up into the reeds, where it…
Back at the start of September I was walking around KWT Oare Marshes Nature Reserve in North Kent with a couple of friends when one spotted this creature running across the path. I recognised it imediately as one of the velvet ants, the female of a type of solitary wingless wasp. I had always wanted…
A few photos form back in March taken at Kent Wildlife Trust’s Oare Marshes Nature reserve. The reserve is a fantastic place to see birds, but they are rarely close enough to get a decent shot, even with a 500mm lens, as it is very busy and a lot of the folk there have dogs…